Project Summary The Institute of Medicine (IOM) established a Forum on Medical Preparedness for Catastrophic Events (the ?Forum?) in 2007. IOM forums are designed to provide its members with a venue for exchanging information and presenting individual views, and allow a structured opportunity for dialogue and discussion while scrutinizing critical and possibly contentious scientific and policy issues. Representatives from government, industry, academia, and other interested parties are expected to serve on the Forum, which will convene two to three times a year to confer on subject areas of mutual interest and concern. At its meetings, the Forum will identify and discuss emerging scientific research and policy required to improve the Nation's public health and medical preparedness, response, resilience, and recovery to acts of terrorism and/or natural disasters, as well as issues in the coordination of federal, state, local, public, and private medical preparedness and resilience activities. The Forum will sponsor workshops as an additional mechanism for informing forum meetings and discussions. The Forum may also commission individually-authored papers on select topic areas. Forum discussions or workshops may lead to proposals for specific studies by units of The National Academies resulting in institutional reports. Such studies, if undertaken, will be conducted independently and kept at arms length from the Forum and in accordance with all institutional policies and procedures governing such study activities.